NAZIM AND THE RISE OF

HITLER
THE REVENGE ON HELMUTH’S
FAMILY
Helmut was a German boy his father was Prominent
physician, deliberated with his wife Whether the time had
come to kill the entire

Family or if he should commit suicide alone . He said to his

wife about his fear of revenge, saying,’ now the Allies will
do to us what we did to the crippled and Jews.’

The whole family committed suicide . Helmut's father was a

Nazi and a supporter of Adolf Hitler.
BAR CHART
PIE CHART OF WORLD WAR II
DEATHS
Chart Title
1st Qtr 2nd Qtr 3rd Qtr 4th Qtr

Allied Civilians
25%
Axis
Civilians
Allied Military
4%
58%
Axis Military
13%
 1)BIRTH OF THE
WEIMAR REPUBLIC
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to
the federal republic and parliamentary
representative democracy established in 1919 in Germany
to replace the imperial form of government. It was named
after Weimar, the city where the constitutional assembly
took place. Its official name was German Reich
Following World War I, the republic emerged from the German Revolution in
November 1918. In 1919, a national assembly convened inWeimar, where
a new constitution for the German Reich was written, then adopted on 11
August of that same year.

The ensuing period of liberal democracy lapsed in the early 1930s, leading to the ascent of the
nascent Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in 1933. The legal measures taken by the Nazi government
in February and March 1933, commonly known as Gleichschaltung ("coordination") meant that
the government could legislate contrary to the constitution. The republic nominally continued
to exist until 1945, as the constitution was never formally repealed.

However, the measures taken by the Nazis in the early part of their rule
rendered the constitution irrelevant. Thus, 1933 is usually seen as the
end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler's Third Reich.
1.1 THE EFFECTS
OF WORLD WAR I
THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR
 The war had a devastating impact on the entire
continent both psychologically and financially.
 Unfortunately, the infant Weimar Republic was
being made to pay for the sins of the old empire.
The republic carried the burden of war guilt and
national humiliation and was financially crippled by
being forced to pay compensation.
 Those who supported the Weimar Republic, mainly
Socialists, Catholics and Democrats, became easy
targets of attack in the conservative nationalist
circles.
The First World War left a deep imprint on European society and
polity. Soldiers came to be placed above civilians. Politicians and
publicists laid great stress on the need for men to be aggressive,
strong
and masculine. The media glorified trench life. The truth, however,
was that soldiers lived miserable lives in these trenches, trapped with
rats feeding on corpses. They faced poisonous gas and enemy shelling,
and witnessed their ranks reduce rapidly. Aggressive war propaganda
and national honour occupied centre stage in the public sphere, while
popular support grew for conservative dictatorships that had recently
come into being. Democracy was indeed a young and fragile idea,
which could not survive the instabilities of interwar Europe.
DURING WORLD WAR I, GERMANY BEGAN
TO USE U-BOATS OR SUBMARINES.
 1.2 POLITICAL
RADICALISM AND
ECONOMIC CRISES
 The birth of the Weimar Republic coincided
with the revolutionary uprising of the
Spartacists League on the pattern of the
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
 Soviets of workers and sailors were
established many cities. The political
atmosphere in Berlin was charged with
demands for Soviet-style governance. Those
opposed to this - such as the socialists,
Democrats and Catholics - met in Weimar to
give shape to the democratic republic.
 The Weimar Republic crushed the uprising
with the help of a war veterans organisation
called Free Corps. The anguished Sparta cists
later founded the Communist Party of
Germany. Communists and Socialists
henceforth became irreconcilable enemies
and could not make common cause against
Hitler. Both revolutionaries and militant
nationalists craved for radical solutions.
THE HYPERINFLATION IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC WAS A THREE-
YEAR PERIOD OF HYPERINFLATION IN GERMANY (THE WEIMAR
REPUBLIC) BETWEEN JUNE 1921 AND JANUARY 1924.
1.3 THE YEARS OF
DEPRESSION
 The years between 1924 and 1928 saw some
stability. Yet this was built on sand. German
investments and industrial recovery were
totally dependent on short-term loans, largely
from the USA. This support was withdrawn
when the Wall Street Exchange crashed in 1929
o Factories shut down, exports fell, farmers
were badly hit and speculators withdrew their
money from the market. The effects of this
recession in the US economy were felt
worldwide. The German economy was the
worst hit by the economic crisis.
 The economic crisis created deep anxieties and
fears in people. The middle classes, especially
salaried employees and pensioners, saw their
savings diminish when the currency lost its
value. Small businessmen, the self-employed and
retailers suffered as their businesses got ruined.

 The large mass of peasantry was affected by a

sharp fall in a g r i c u l t u r a l prices and
women, unable to fill their children’s
stomachs, were filled with a sense of deep
despair.
 The Weimar constitution had some inherent defects,
which made it unstable a n d vulnerable t o
dictatorship. One was proportional representation.
 This made achieving a majority by any one party a
near impossible task, leading to a rule by coalitions.
Another defect was Article 48, which gave the
President the powers to impose emergency, suspend
civil rights and rule by decree. Within its short life,
the Weimar Republic saw twenty different cabinets
lasting on an average 239 days, and a liberal use of
Article 48. Yet the crisis could not be managed.
People lost confidence in the democratic
parliamentary system, which seemed to offer no
solutions.
HITLER’S RISE
TO POWER
 This crisis in the economy,

polity and society formed the background to Hitler’s

rise to power.
 When the First World War broke out, he enrolled for
the army, acted as a messenger in the front, became
a corporal, and earned medals for bravery.
 The German defeat horrified him and the Versailles
Treaty made him furious. In 1919, he joined a small
group called the German Workers’ Party. He
subsequently took over the organisation and renamed
it the National Socialist German Workers’ party.
 In 1923, Hitler planned to seize control of Bavaria,
march to Berlin and capture power. He failed, was
arrested, tried for treason, and later released.
 The Nazis could not effectively mobilise popular
support till the early 1930s. It was during the Great
Depression that Nazism became a mass movement. As
we have seen, after 1929, banks collapsed and
businesses shut down, workers lost their jobs and the
middle classes were threatened with destitution. In
such a situation Nazi propaganda stirred hopes of a
better future. In 1928, the Nazi Party got no more
than 2. 6 per cent votes in the Reichstag ñ the
German parliament. By 1932, it had become the
largest party with 37 per cent votes.
 Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and
his words moved people.
 He promised to build a strong nation, undo the
injustice of the Versailles Treaty and restore
the dignity of the German people.
 He promised employment for those looking for
work, and a secure future for the youth. He
promised to weed out all foreign influences
and resist all foreign ‘conspiracies’ against
Germany.
 2.1 THE
DESTRUCTION OF
DEMOCRACY
 On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg
offered the Chancellorship, the highest
position in the cabinet of ministers, to Hitler.
 Having acquired powers, Hitler set out to
dismantle the structure of Democracy.

 On March 3, 1993, the famous Enabling Act was

passed. This Act established dictatorship in
Germany
 All political parties and trade unions in
Germany were banned except for the Nazi
party and its affiliates .
 2.2
RECONSTRUCTIO
N
• Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic
recovery to the economist Hjalmar Schacht
who aimed at full production and full
employment through a state-funded work-
creation programe.
• In foreign policy also, Hitler acquired quick
successes. He pulled out of the League of
Nations in 1933, reoccupied the Rhineland in
1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in
1938 under the slogan, One people, One
empire and One Leader.
EXPANSION OF NAZI POWER
1943
 THE NAZI
WORLDVIEW
• The crimes that the Nazi’s committed
were linked to a system of belief and a set
of practices.
• Nazi Ideology was synonymous with Hitler’s
Worldview.
• According to this, there was no equality
between people, but only a racial hierarchy.
• Hitler’s racism borrowed from thinkers like
Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
• The other aspect of Hitler’s ideology related to
the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or
living space.
 3.1
ESTABLISHMENT
OF THE RACIAL
STATE
• Once in power, the Nazi’s quickly began to implement
thier dream of creating an exclusive racial community
of pure Germans by physically eliminating all those who
were seen as ‘undesirable’ in the extended empire.
• Nazi’s wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy Nordic
Aryans’. They alone were considered desirable. Only
they were seen as worthy of prospering and multiplying
against all others who were classed as undesirable.
• This meant that even those Germans who were seen as
impure or abnormal had no right to exist.
• Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany.
Gypsies and blacks in living in Nazi Germany were also
treated as inferiors
JEWS BEING KILLED IN NAZI
GERMANY.
3.2 THE RACIAL
UTOPIA
• Under the shadow of war, the Nazi’s proceeded to
realise their murderous, racial ideal. Genocide and
war became two sides of the same coin. Occupied
Poland was divided up. Much of north-western
Poland was annexed to Germany. Poles were forced
to leave their homes and properties behind to be
occupied by ethnic Germans brought in from
occupied europe.
• The other part of Germany was known as the
General Government, the destination of all the
‘undesirables’ of the empire.
• With some of the largest ghettos and gas chambers,
the General government also served as the killing
fields for the jews.
THIS IS ONE OF THE FREIGHT CARS USED TO
DEPORT JEWS TO THE DEATH CHAMBERS.
GAS CHAMBERS WHERE THE
JEWS WERE KILLED.
STEPS TO DEATH (JEWS)
Stage 1 : 1933-1939
You have no right to line among us.
The Nuremberg Laws of citizenship of September 1935:
 1. Only Persons of German or related blood would
henceforth be German citizens enjoying the protection of
the German forbidden.
 2. Marriages between Jews and Germans were forbidden.
 3. Extramarital relations between Jews and Germans
became a crime.
 4. Jews were forbidden to fly the national flag.
Other legal measures included:
Boycott of Jewish businesses
Expulsion from government services
Forced selling and confiscation of their properties
1) Park benches announces : ‘ Only for ARYANS.
2) The sign declares that the North sea bathing
resort is free of jews.
 Stage 2 : Ghettoisation 1940- 1944
 You have no right to live among us
 From September 1941, all Jews had to wear a
yellow Star of David on their breasts. This identity
mark was stamped on their passport,
 all legal documents and houses. They were kept in
Jewish houses in Germany, and in ghettos like Lodz
and Warsaw in the east. These
 became sites of extreme misery and poverty. Jews
had to surrender all their wealth before they
entered a ghetto. Soon the ghettos
 were brimming with hunger, starvation and disease
due to deprivation and poor hygiene.
 Stage 3 : Annihilation 1941 onwards :
 You have no Right to Live.
 Jews from Jewish houses, concentration
camps and ghettos from different parts of
Europe were brought to death factories by
 goods trains. In Poland and elsewhere in the
east, most notably Belzek, Auschwitz,
Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno and Majdanek,
 they were charred in gas chambers. Mass
killings took place within minutes with
scientific precision.
 1) Killed while trying to escape. The camps were enclosed with live wires.
 2) Piles of clothes outside the gas chambers.
 3 & 4 ) Concentration chambers
 YOUTH IN NAZI
GERMANY
Germany was in one of its strongest stances for
nearly 20 years. It was this that Hitler wanted to capitalise
on for the future of Nazi Germany and by doing this they
need to take advantage of the young people as they are the
next generation of Nazis. Using the ideas of Social Darwinism they
Nazis decided that only the most strongest and ruthless should survive.
This was to be the Aryan race. How was Hitler supposed to tackle such a massive
task? Would it work? And what effects would it have? The Nazis would have to
brainwash the German youth in every possible way. So they did, they took over the
lives of
the German children, and run them for them. If Hitler wanted his anticipated 1000-
year regime to succeed the future generations were the children. To get people on
your side you need to get them on your side when they are young, Younger people
are far easier to influence than when they are adults. This is because the younger
you are the more you believe other people as they are more dependant on them,
and the younger generations look up to the older generations who lead by example
to make the younger people the perfect Nazis.
 NAZI IDEOLOGY

From 1920 to 1923, Hitler formulated his ideology, then published it

in 1925–26, as Mein Kampf, a two-volume, biography and political
manifesto. Though Hitler for "tactical" reasons had rhetorically declared a
1920 party platform with socialist platitudes "unshakable," actually "many
paragraphs of the party program were obviously merely a demagogic appeal
to the mood of the lower classes at a time when they were in bad straits and
were sympathetic to radical and even socialist slogans...Point 11, for
example...Point 12...nationalization...Point 16...communalization....
apparently really believed in the 'socialism' of National Socialism. "In actual
practice, such points were mere slogans, "most of them forgotten by the
time the party came to power. The Nazi
leader himself was later to be embarrassed when reminded
of some of them. "Historian Conan Fischer argues that
the Nazis were sincere in their use of the adjective
socialist, which they saw as inseparable from the
adjective national,and meant it as a socialism of
the master race, rather thanthe socialism of the
"underprivileged and oppressed
seeking justice and equal rights."
JEWS UNDER NAZIS
One should differentiate between the cultural antisemitism symptomatic
of the German conservatives – found especially in the German officer corps and
the high civil administration – and mainly directed against the Eastern Jews on
the one hand, and völkisch antisemitism on the other.
On April 1, 1933, Jewish doctors, shops, lawyers and stores were
boycotted. Only six days later, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional
Civil Service was passed, banning Jews from being employed in government. This
law meant that Jews were now indirectly and directly dissuaded or banned from
privileged and upper-level positions reserved for “Aryan” Germans. From then
on, Jews were forced to work at more menial positions, beneath non-Jews,
pushing them to more labored positions.
On August 25, 1933, the Haavara Agreement was signed, which allowed 60,000
German Jews to emigrate to Palestine by 1939.
At the same time the Reich Citizenship Law was passed and was
reinforced in November by a decree, stating that all Jews, even quarter- and
half-Jews, were no longer citizens. This meant that they had no basic civil rights,
such as that to vote. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs,
effectively preventing them from exerting any influence in education, politics,
higher education and industry. Because of this, there was nothing to stop the
anti-Jewish actions which spread across the Nazi-German economy.
In particular, Jews were penalized financially for their perceived racial status.
 Government contracts could no longer be awarded to Jewish businesses.
Next “Aryan” doctors could only treat “Aryan” patients. Provision of medical care
to Jews was already hampered by the fact that Jews were banned from being
doctors or having any professional jobs. Later Jews with first names of non-Jewish
origin had to add Israel (males) or Sarah (females) to their names, and a
large J was to be imprinted on their passports beginning October 5. Jewish
children were banned from going to normal schools. Nearly all Jewish companies
had either collapsed under financial pressure and declining profits, or had been
forced to sell out to the Nazi German government.
The storefronts of Jewish shops and offices were smashed and
vandalised, and many synagogues were destroyed by fire. Approximately 91 Jews
were killed, and another 30,000 arrested, mostly able bodied males, all of whom
were sent to the newly formed concentration camps. In the next 3 months
some2000–2500
of them died in the concentration camps,the rest were released
under the condition that they leaveGermany. Many Germans
were disgusted by this action when the full extent of the
damage was discovered, Hitler ordered it to be blamed on
the Jews. Collectively,the Jews were made to pay back one
billion Reichsmark in damages, the fine being raised by
confiscating 20% of every Jewish property. Of the 522,000
Jews living in Germany in January 1933, only 214,000 were Jews killed in camps!!
left by the eve of World War II.
Jews emigrating from Berlin to Jews in concentration camps
the United States, 1939
NAZI CULT OF MOTHERHOOD
Children in Nazi Germany were told that women were different from men,
the fight for equal rights for men and women was wrong and it would destroy
society. While boys were taught to be aggressive, masculine and steel hearted, girls
were told that they had to become good mothers and rear pure blooded Aryan
children, they have to maintain the purity of the German race, distance themselves
from Jews, look after the home and teach their children Nazi values.
In Nazi Germany all mothers were not treated equally, women who bore
racially undesirable children were punished and those who produced racially
desirable children were awarded like –better treatment in hospital, concessions in
shop, theater tickets and railway pass. To encourage women to produced more
children, honour Crosses were awarded, a bronze Cross for four children, silver for
six and gold for eight children.
Those who maintain contact with Jews, Poles and
Russians were paraded through the town with shaved heads,
blackened faces and play cards hanging around their neck
saying “ I Have spoiled the honour of the Nation”, many
received jail sentences and lost civic honour as well as their
husbands and families for this offence. This program included
a gigantic Nazi propaganda campaign to urge women to
increase the size of their families. Cash incentives were paid
MutterKreuz ("Mother's
for each child born Cross")
 Youth in Nazi Germany………..

Hitler felt that a strong Nazi society could be established only by teaching
children Nazi Ideology, and this requires a control over the child both inside and
outside school. The Following steps were taken for this………
1) All schools were cleansed and purified by dismissing all Jew teachers and all those
who were seen as politically unreliable.
2) German and Jew children cannot sit together or play together.
3) Subsequently Jews, Gypsies and the physically handicapped were thrown out of
schools and finally to the Gas chambers.
4) School textbook were rewritten, racial science was introduced to justify Nazi idea
of race.
5) Children were taught to be loyal and submissive, hate Jews and worship Hitler.
6) Even sports were nurture in the spirit of violence and aggression among children.
7) Youth organization were made responsible for educating German youth in the
Spirit of National socialism.
8) Ten year olds had to enter Jung – volk, at 14 all boys had to join the Nazi youth
organization HITLER YOUTH, where they learnt to worship war, glorify aggression
and violence, condemn democracy and hate Jews, Communist, Gypsies and all
those categorized as undesirable.
9) After a period of rigorous ideological and physical training they joined the Labour
service by 18, then they have to serve in the armed forces and enter one of the
Nazi organization.
THE ART OF PROPAGANDA ………..
The Nazi regime used language and media with care and often to great
effect for Propaganda, they coined different words for their official
communications such as – Mass Killing were termed “Special Treatment"," Final
solution” for the Jews, “euthanasis” “ selection” and “disinfection” for the
disabled.

“Evacuation” meant deporting people to gas chambers and gas chambers

were termed as “disinfection area” and looked like bathroom equipped with fake
showerheads.

Nazi idea were spread through visual images, films, radio, posters,
catchy slogan and Leaflets, propaganda films were made to create hatred for
Jews and the most famous Film was “The Eternal Jew”.
Jewish ghettos in
Europe existed
because Jews were viewed as
foreigners due to their non-
Christian beliefs in a Renaissance
Christian environment. As a
result, Jews were placed under
strict regulations throughout
 ORDINARY PEOPLE AND THEIR CRIMES AGAINST
HUMANITY
Common people reacted in different ways…….

(i) Many saw the world through Nazi eyes and felt hatred and anger
surge inside them when they saw a Jew. They willingly marked the
houses of the Jews and reported suspicious neighbour's.

(ii) They genuinely believed the Jews were responsible for their
misfortunes. Nazism they felt would bring prosperity, improve general
well being and pride of the nation.

(iii) Large majority of people were passive onlookers, apathetic

witnesses, because they were too scared to act, to differ to protest.

(iv) However, many organized active assistance braving police,

repression and even death.
KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST

Historians differ as to where the responsibility for the

Holocaust lies. Intentionalist historians such as Lucy Dawidowicz argue that Adolf
Hitler planned the extermination of the Jewish people from as early as 1918,and that
he personally oversaw its execution.
Historical and philosophical interpretations
The enormity of the Holocaust has prompted much analysis. The Holocaust was
indeed characterized by an industrial project of extermination. Others have
presented the Holocaust as a product of German history, analyzing its deep roots in
German society. But it was only after the war ended and Germany was defeated that
the world came to realise the horrors of what had happened. While the Germans
were preoccupied with their own plight as a defeated nation emerging out of the
rubble, the Jews wanted the world to remember the atrocities and sufferingsthey
had endured during the Nazi killing operations , also called the
Holocaust.
Yet the history and the memory of the Holocaust live on in memoirs,
fiction, documentaries, poetry, memorials and museums in many
parts of the world today. These are a tribute to those who resisted it,
an embarrassing reminder to those who collaborated, and a warning
to those who watched in silence.
THE
END

By,
Group -2.